


Dreaming in the Shallows

by Skyler10



Series: Verse as in Music [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Prophetic Dreams, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad Wolf shows up in Ten's dream to give him hope of a future with Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming in the Shallows

**Author's Note:**

> Was listening to the song "Shallows" by Daughter and thought of this, so highly recommend listening to it while reading. Enjoy!

She often came to him in his dreams. Lately he slept even less than usual, but when he relented from pure exhaustion, she would be there to greet him.

Some nights she died in his arms. Some nights she was taken. He searched for her and couldn't find her anywhere. Some nights she floated away, reaching, reaching for him, pulled farther and farther away into painfully bright light. He wept against a solid white wall, feeling her presence on the other side but unable to get through.

This last nightmare hurt the worst because it was the truth. 

But they weren’t always nightmares. Sometimes she would bring happy memories or act out his desires (some innocent, others much less so).

But tonight was different. She was different.

He reclined on a twilight beach, the tide brushing his calves and creeping up his swim trunks before receding. But always returning. Never failing to return to him.

Despair for all he had lost threatened to overwhelm him.

 

_Let the water rise,_

_Let the ground crack._

_Let me fall inside,_

_Lying on my back_

_Lying on my back_

 

She appeared beside him and let out a happy giggle as the sea tickled her sides. He glanced over with a special smile, only for her. She didn’t see it though. Her eyes were shut as her head tilted back, exposing the flesh of her neck. He took in her form, her white bikini with the halter top tinted pink by the sunset, the dream blurring her into a radiant glow.

Not real. None of this is real. Just a dream.

He tore his eyes away from her and took in the sky, twinkling with a red star cluster. Its swirls seemed to call to them, beckoning them home.

Reality was nothing like this. Reality was fire and explosions and threats and death and fear and running, always running.

 

_Dry your smoke-stung eyes,_

_So you can see the light._

_Staring at the sky_

_Watching stars collide_

_Watching stars collide_

_If you leave,_

_When I go_

_You'll find me,_

_In the shallows._

 

“Doctor?” She finally broke the silence.

“Rose?”

“No. I’m like Rose. But not Rose Tyler herself. She couldn’t come to you like this.”

“I know. Just Dream Rose.”

“Look again.”

He finally allowed his eyes to wander back to hers. Instead of gentle amber, he was met with burning gold. Fierce and terrifying, yet filled with pure divinity and adoration.

The eyes of a goddess.

“Bad Wolf,” he identified her.

“Are you afraid of me, Doctor? Will you run now?”

 

_When the time comes,_

_On the last day_

_When they start to come down,_

_Will you just,_

_Will you run away?_

_Will you run away?_

“No. Never from you, love.” He trailed a finger down her cheek and her eyelids mercifully closed in contentment, the evidence of the vortex no longer ripping through his broken hearts.

“Kiss me then,” she commanded.

He eagerly obeyed and was flooded with emotion for her. Their passion overwhelmed him through all that was touching was their lips. Why was that again? Why wasn’t she touching him?

 

_Let it all rain down,_

_From the blood stained clouds._

_Come out, come out, to the sea my love_

_And just,_

_Drown with me_

_Drown with me._

 

He pulled back, remembering it wasn’t Rose he was with. Wisdom told him to be wary of this creature, this siren, luring him to the destruction of his carefully built emotional barriers.

Her head was resting on her right hand, elbow propping her up on her side. He noticed her left hand was still held carefully behind her back. A playful gleam shot through her golden orbs.

“Not allowed to say,” she purred, reading his thoughts.

“Why?” he countered, catching on to the game.

“You aren’t supposed to know yet.”

“Yet? So I will know?”

“Perhaps.”

“If what?”

“You do your part.”

“And that is?” He raised an eyebrow, intrigued by her evasiveness.

“Martha just left, yes?”

His brow furrowed. How could she know about Martha? And what did that have to do with anything?

“Take a new companion,” the Bad Wolf ordered. “Not new exactly, but you’ll know what I mean.”

He brushed aside her latter confusing rabbit trail.

“I don’t want a new companion. I want you.”

“In time, Time Lord.”

He shot up, intensely focused now that she had finally gotten to her point.

“How? When?” It was a demand more than a query.

She only smiled devilishly.

He tried again. “What’s behind your back?”

Her eyes sparkled, literally, but she shook her head.

Ohhhh. She wanted him to guess.

“Is it…” he began but she shook her head more violently this time, letting gold curls fall loose around her face. He brushed them back out of habit and trailed his fingers down her cheek, her neck, her shoulder…

The need to know what was in her left hand tugged at his mind relentlessly, guiding his actions. He would never have pushed the matter this far with the real Rose Tyler. He trusted her too much. If she had said no, he would have known there was a good reason why.

But this… dream-creature, goddess, figment of his imagination… she was something else entirely.

He trailed his fingers lower across her arm, following it behind her back, and up the bend of her elbow, slowly and lightly enough to allow her the opportunity to pull away. It was part out of respect for her power, part out of a cowardly need to know that the effect of him acquiring whatever information she was about to reveal to him wouldn’t be solely his fault. It could end the universe, stop time itself, for all he cared in that moment. He was a bewitched man, too transfixed by this enigma to stop himself.

She flattened her hand against her back and he traced a finger down her palm. She giggled as he scowled in confusion.

“There’s nothing there!” he exclaimed, ashamed to be tricked so easily and so completely.

“Oh, but there is. Look again.”

She entwined his fingers with her own and he felt it. A hard, smooth band across her ring finger. A ring. The Bad Wolf was wearing a ring on her left hand.

He searched her eyes, desperate for answers.

“Rose?”

“It’s hers. However she is, I am.”

“Then she’s…?”

The Bad Wolf dipped her head in a short nod of affirmation.

“Oh.” The heartbreak washed over him with the tide. He swallowed and moved his mouth, trying to form the words to say he was happy for her, that this was the way it should be …

“Doctor, I should clarify… I exist outside of time. This future may or may not come to pass. Timey-wimey and all that lot.”

She sniffed in dismissal of laws she was not bound to.

“What does that mean?” he growled in frustration.

“How should I know? You made it up!”

He untangled their fingers and his hand grasped her shoulder.

“Tell me. Tell me what you’re doing to me. Tell me why you’re here.” His voice stayed calm, but his eyes were wild and wide as the moons above them.

Her divine flames bore into him as their stares locked.

“Yours.”

“What.”

She whipped her left hand from behind her back and between their faces.

“Yours,” she repeated.

The diamond was small, but shone brightly in the seaside moonlight. The sides of the ring (for he was leaning in now, close enough to see the intricate detail) were engraved with the familiar circles of his mother tongue.

“Forever,” he read. “This is hers? Ours? I gave her this?” He choked back tears, caught up in the crashing of longing, wave after wave after…

“And later, this.” The Bad Wolf lifted his hand and brought it to her middle, which expanded before him, as only could happen in dreams.

“I don’t… I don’t understand…” He stuttered. This was no dream. This was torture by hope. Showing him all the things he ever wanted but could never have.

“Look again,” she said for the third time that night. She held his palm more firmly to her swollen, taut skin. A infantile telepathic link shot through his mind. It was like him, but altered somehow. Not fully Time Lord, but not pure human either.

The waves of longing were joined by waves of elation and panic.

“Please,” he begged. “Please tell me how.”

“Doctor, I would think with a name like that you’d know how it works,” she teased him with a suggestive raise of her eyebrows and a pitying pout.

But he was too far gone for her games.

“This is impossible. All of it. The walls are closed…” A terrible sickening thought occurred to him. “Do you mean the parallel me? She’s met the Pete’s World version of me and they…”

“Not the Pete’s World version, no.” She tried to keep a straight face, but her impish laughter bubbled over. “But my, you are clever. No, this is your ring, Doctor. Your child.”

“How?!” He was weeping now, but he didn’t notice. “If you’ll just tell me how to get back to her… I’ll do anything. Please.”

She was staring again, golden flames tearing into him once more.

“Anything, Doctor? Would you give it up?”

“What?” He hadn’t been expecting a reply.

“Imagine it was all taken from you: your ability to regenerate, your Gallifreyan biology, your TARDIS, your beloved universe… But you were left with her. What would you do?”

He reeled back. She wasn’t teasing him. She was asking him earnestly.

“You know I can’t do that.” He shook his head in protest. “You know why I couldn’t even when she was here… These planets need me. This universe needs a Time Lord. I’m the last one. I have to survive. I can’t afford to think like that.” He leaned back in the sand again and studied the stars he was considering abandoning.

“But if you had a choice. No obligations. If there were two of you, let’s say. One here to guard this universe but one of you got to stay with her. Which would you choose?” Her tone was lighter now, encouraging him to play along with her hypotheticals.

“IF I got through the void, somehow, without destroying both universes.” He tilted a doubtful expression her direction. “If I could split in two, I wouldn’t have to choose. I could have both…” He recognized the logical flaw but let her voice it.

“But separate conciousnesses. You’d be cut off from one or the other forever.”

“I’ve had centuries in this universe… with my TARDIS.” His voice was small now. She knew he loved the TARDIS more than anything. It was his home. “But such a short time with her, erh, you, oh you know who I mean.”

He rubbed his neck in impatience, hating that he had ever let this dream go so far.

“Then you would do it? Sacrifice your entire way of life, your home, for the woman you love?”

“Yeah,” he sighed sadly. “I suppose I would.”

The Bad Wolf smiled, which he felt was quite inappropriate for the way she was encouraging his mourning and wallowing.

“That’s all I needed to know.” She pecked a kiss on his nose and stood to walk away. “Thank you.”

“Wait!” He jumped to follow her. “You haven’t explained anything!”

“Take a new companion,” she reminded him. “I’m sorry you’ll have to forget we ever had this conversation in order for the timeline to stay intact. I’m sure you of all people understand. But just say yes when a new friend comes aboard and all will go exactly as I planned.”

“As you planned?”

“Yes,” she stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “And don’t muck it up.”

And with that, she vanished, as he had before the real Rose Tyler on a beach in Norway.

 

_If you leave,_

_When I go_

_You'll find me,_

_In the shallows._

 


End file.
